Join the Young Birders Club to bird the lush green grass and towering Oak and Redwood trees of Cuesta Park! We'll look for resident birds, including Red-tailed Hawks, White-breasted and Pygmy Nuthatches, Western Bluebirds, and American Robins, and keep an eye out for incoming wintering sparrows.This trip is designed for ...
A remarkably rich chemistry is at play in the regions of space where solar systems are born. In this talk, Professor Bergner, the College of Chemistry’s first-ever astrochemist, will describe how powerful telescopes combined with lab experiments are revealing the chemical outcomes in these exotic physical environments. Professor Bergner will ...
Where: BerkeleyCost: Free
Critter Search at SanbornSome of the most interesting critters are hard to find. Join us as we look for some of the smaller residents of Sanborn Park. Look for Salamanders under rocks, Millipedes under logs, and newts in the ponds! Let’s see who we can find!Register at weblink
Bioethics (or Medical Ethics) has emerged and developed rapidly as an independent (but interdependent) discipline from standard ethics since WWII. While the Nazi doctors trial and atrocities brought to light many previously unthinkable transgressions, a developing discipline actually pre-dated the Nazi regime with respect to protections of human subjects in ...
Where: Cost: Free
Sunday, 10/08/23
Five Dollar Day at The Lawrence Hall of ScienceVisit The Lawrence and enjoy all the hands-on science we offer for just $5 per person. $5 Days are part of our efforts to increase access to our programs for all.
Where: BerkeleyCost: $5
Solar ObservingIt’s there for us year round, lighting our days and providing energy for our lives, so maybe it’s time to give it a closer look. Join SJAA for amazing and detailed views of the Sun, and be assured that we’ll be using special telescopes that will keep your eyeballs perfectly ...
Quantum Limited Thermal and Thermoelectric Transport in GrapheneIn low-dimensional systems, a growing number of many-body quantum phenomena have emerged from the combination of reduced dimensionality, strong interactions, and topology. Thermal and thermoelectric transport, which is sensitive to energy- and entropy-carrying degrees of freedom, provides a discriminating probe of emergent excitations in quantum materials. In this talk, I ...
In this talk, I will cover a few recent papers and projects that focus on the measurement of emissions and the costs, benefits, and opportunities associated with a transition to sustainable, deeply decarbonized, and equitable energy systems is needed in the United States. For example, in [1], we show that ...
Where: Menlo ParkCost: Free
The Motions of Stars and Gas in Disk GalaxiesStudies of disk galaxies, like our own Milky Way, are foundational to our current understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. Studies of their rotational motions provided one of the first pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter. I will discuss similar kinematic measurements we use to understand their ...
The past has left its traces on the world, and we only have to know how to read themAnimals arose over five hundred million years ago, and by the end of the Cambrian had diversified into today’s phylum-level forms. This early history is obscured by the fact that the first animals were soft-bodied and left only enigmatic fossils. Here we take a comparative genomic approach to inferring the ...
US Tribes are developing their energy visions, but there are challenges. Strategic Energy Planning assists to meet many of the challenges.Speaker: Sandra Begay, Sandia National Labs
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Tuesday, 10/10/23
Cybersecurity Futures 2030: National Security Implications for Policymakers - LivestreamHow do current cybersecurity frameworks hold up to the challenges of the future? What are the potential gaps in our knowledge? What are the possible courses of action for governments, citizens, and the private sector?This session will explore these questions and other major themes that emerged from a series of ...
The interaction between fire and humans has a long history and fire has enabled the persistence of ecosystems and humans alike. Yet, as fires of large magnitudes and frequencies can (and have) destabilized the social-ecological interactions mediated by fire and the processes they support, a novel understanding is needed to ...
In most condensed matter systems we think of electrons as delocalized particles that roam about the internal landscape of a material. This is especially true when the number of electrons in a crystal is less than the number of lattice sites, in which case most materials are metallic. But what ...
Where: StanfordCost: Free
Resilient Societies: Silicon Valley's ReinventionOver the past decade, tech companies have become new and powerful players on the international stage. Borderless digital platforms and cutting-edge innovations in biotech, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence have not only revolutionized our way of life, but have also exponentially increased in speed, reshaping our institutions, norms, and values. ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: Free
Conversational AI and the Future of the WebAfter a long break, we are back in person. We are bringing together experts in Conversational AI to discuss the latest trends and advancements. Our panelists will delve into topics like Artificial Intelligence, Language Models, and the Future of the Web. Don't miss this opportunity to gain insights from industry ...
Two dramatic eclipses of the Sun are coming to North America during the 2023-24 school year - an annular (“ring of fireâ€) eclipse Oct. 14, 2023 and a total eclipse Apr. 8, 2024. People in two narrow paths will have the full eclipse experience each time. Everyone else (an estimated 500 million people, including ...
Where: Cost: Free
Wednesday, 10/11/23
Motivation, Representation, and Autonomous AgentsThe past decade’s series of dramatic AI successes has brought us closer to realizing the dream of the autonomous agent - an artificial system that can learn about its world, make decisions, and set and achieve goals, all with minimal human intervention. Nature has given us an incredible motif for ...
Along rivers, bedload transport causes collision and wear of sediment particles, by both surface attrition that produces sand and silt, and chipping that produces larger fragments. As a result, riverbed sediments exhibit two downstream trends: rounding and fining where particle size decreases with distance downstream. Sediments supplied by hillslopes to ...
The presentation delves into the prevalent challenges of human infertility and congenital defects exacerbated by environmental toxins. Chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates, present in plastics, cosmetics, and personal care items, disrupt hormones and pathways as endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs). Despite efforts to replace BPA with alternatives labeled “BPA-Free,†these ...
Where: EmeryvilleCost: Free
Doors Open 2023: Go Behind - the - Scenes at the Physical ArchiveWe are excited to offer a behind-the-scenes tour of the physical collections of books, music, film, and video in Richmond, California.With this special insider event we are opening the doors to an often unseen place. See the lifecycle of physical books - donation, preservation, digitization, and access. Also, samples from ...
Near-Earth objects present both an existential threat to human civilization and an extraordinary opportunity to help our exploration and expansion across the solar system. The risk of a sudden, civilization-altering collision with an asteroid or comet has markedly diminished in recent decades due to diligent astronomical surveys, but a significant ...
Where: Los Altos HillsCost: Free
What Can AI Teach Us About the Human Mind...and vice versa?Scientists often use models to study complicated and interesting phenomena (think the model of the atom, mouse models to study cancer, etc.). In particular, computational models allow us to improve our understanding of phenomena that cannot be observed directly, whether due to time (such as predicting earthquakes) or access constraints ...
Where: San RafaelCost: Free
Thursday, 10/12/23
Coastal Walk at Cowell-Purisima TrailJoin Peninsula Open Space Trust for a beautiful Thursday walk along the Cowell-Purisima trail that POST helped create by protecting adjacent farmland. While it may be foggy, we hope to catch gorgeous views of the ocean, nearby farmland, and glimpses of harbor seals, pelicans, hawks, rabbits, and whales during the ...
Listen carefully to the secret sounds of the animal world. In this collection of videos created by scientist Karen Bakker she takes you up close to five species and their fascinating sounds, and the stories of how scientists have studied them. Drawing from her book The Sounds of Life, Karen ...
Where: San FranciscoCost: $19.95 General, Free for members
NightLifeCalling all creatures of the night: explore the nocturnal side of the Academy at NightLife and see what's revealed. With live DJs, outdoor bars, ambiance lighting, and nearly 60,000 live animals (including familiar faces like Claude, our alligator with albinism), the night is sure to be wild.Venture into our latest ...
When we contemplate how bird diversity has changed, we often focus on the handful of species we have lost entirely. But while we have yet to lose a single bird species to our rapidly changing climate, birds and other creatures are currently adapting and responding in myriad ways. Across the world, species are shifting their geographic ...
Join Bay Area Skeptics president Eugenie Scott in a wide-ranging conversation with science journalist and creator of the very popular skeptical YouTube channel, Potholer54. Through clips from the channel, Scott and Hadfield discuss his approach to his long-time production of science-related videos, and the importance of outreach to the public ...
Where: Cost: Free
Friday, 10/13/23
Bair Island Walking TourJoin Peninsula Open Space Trust for a walking tour at Bair Island! You’ll be guided by POST ambassadors who will share the history of this beautiful protected space, information about the species that live there, and what you can do to contribute.This easy 1 mile walk with little to no ...
Deep ocean industrial and hazardous waste disposal was a pervasive global practice near coastlines in the 20th century. Uncertainty in the quantity, location, and contents of the discarded materials at historic dump sites pose ongoing risks to marine ecosystems and human health. This talk will describe observations and analytic techniques ...
Where: Pacific GroveCost: Free
Public Astronomy Viewing NightsCome for public viewing of the night sky at Sonoma State University's Observatory.Check the weblink for weather conditions before going as the event is weather dependent.
Where: Rohnert ParkCost: Free
How to Survive the A.I. ApocalypseAfter two sold-out shows in NYC, Shiva and Ben of KRAZAM are coming to SF, bringing you the knowledge you need to survive in the post-AI world!Live ComedyInteractive SegmentsExclusive New KRAZAM VidsExistential DreadForbidden KnowledgeAppSec Lessons